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Waiting lists for routine NHS treatment such as hip and knee surgery are at their highest for a decade, official figures have shown.

An estimated four million people were waiting to be seen by a specialist at the end of June, the first time the figure has been exceeded since 2007.

Experts said the milestone marked a “symbolic” moment for the under-strain health service, as statistics revealed the number of people waiting more than 18 weeks for consultant-led treatment, which the NHS says should be the maximum time it takes to start treating them, has steadily increased.

Everything is interlinked - a delayed discharge in a patient waiting for social care deprives a surgical patient of their bedDr Mark Holland, Society for Acute Medicine

Across the first six months of 2017, an average of 369,007 patients had been waiting longer than 18 weeks to start treatment after being referred by their GP.

This average figure for the same period in 2016 was 289,195 and in 2015 it was 208,489.

The data also shows that the the NHS in England has now gone two years without meeting its target for seeing people in A&E within four hours.

In July this year, 90.3% of patients spent four hours or less in A&E, missing NHS England's 95% target, which was last achieved in July 2015.

Two of eight official cancer targets were missedCredit:
PA

Dr Mark Holland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: "This shocking figure is another damning indictment of the crisis we are experiencing in the NHS and is another example of how every unresolved problem impacts on another area.

“Everything is interlinked - a delayed discharge in a patient waiting for social care deprives a surgical patient of their bed.

“It is a fact that the NHS has less beds than other health economies and it is a fact that we have a workforce crisis.